Notes from Finance and Operations

A few notes from yesterday afternoon's Finance and Operations subcommittee meeting, held yesterday at the Durkin Administration Building at 4 pm (if you check the bottom of the page, it's already up, if you would like to watch it).

• We received a report back investigating a zero waste cafeteria model as implemented in The Harding School in Santa Barbara, CA. A zero waste cafeteria uses paper products that are compostable (made of corn-based plastics, for example). WPS research came back with an increase of at least $180,000 to implement something of this kind. Admin also pointed out that currently all trash from WPS goes to Wheelabrator in Millbury, which incinerates the trash for electricity (a "waste-to-energy" model).
• We also got back a requested report on the school lunch program. Currently 12,700 kids in the city of Worcester get free lunch; 1000 get reduced lunch; about 2000 get paid lunch. (Just as a reminder, there are about 24,000 kids in the WPS.) We have our cooks trained to prepared from scratch parts of the meals from USDA offerings (this is uncommon, by the way. A lot of districts send their USDA chicken out to Tyson, for example). All bread is now whole grain, and we've had an increasing amount of fruits and vegetables coming to WPS in the Farm to School Program. All 4 oz. yogurt and milk no longer contains HFCS.
  
• The special ed bus contract was approved with Durham, whose bid of $27 million came in under that of First Student. The full committee will vote on this tomorrow night.
• There was also the third quarter report. On a quarterly basis, the F&O reviews the accounts as presented by the Business office which recommends transfers as necessary to the full committee. On yesterday's report, an importance piece is a bit on the auditor's report. As I explained elsewhere (and, if you're interested, you can hear Mr. Allen do it above in the video, or watch tomorrow night, as he'll probably be asked to do so again), for the past ten years, the utilities for WPS have, with the approval of the city auditor, been paid on a school (rather than fiscal) calendar. The auditors, in short, interpreted the case law differently, and so WPS will be paying those bills on the fiscal calendar from here on out. However, that leaves the budgeted utility funds for those months for this year available. As a general rule, schools may not carry over funds; however, stimulus funds may be carried over if the state is notified. The state has been so notified. The balance (should the full committee approve) is being used to pre-purchase books and to fund the Clark Master's program for this year.
• (still in the third quarter report) We've also seen an increase in the need for transportation funds under the McKinney-Vento Act, which requires busing to and from their home district for students experiencing homelessness. We've seen a 50% increase. The numbers of kids are up.

Again, this report comes back to the full committee at tomorrow night's meeting.